This was before the game, before the Pacers would finally exorcise the haunting Madison Square Garden demons, and finally KO the Knicks when it mattered most.

Reggie Miller stood before his team and said these words: “If the league called you up and asked who you would want to play to get to the finals, who would you want to play? If you could pick a spot to play, where would you want to play?”

“We all said, ‘The Knicks and the Garden, and let’s go for it,’ ” Miller would say after he scored 34 points and the Pacers ripped up the Knicks, 93-80, to capture the Eastern Conference finals and advance to the NBA Finals for the first time in history.

“This is special,” Miller said. “We’ve always fought, always gotten to Eastern Conference Finals, and always lost to New York, Chicago or Orlando.”

No one put it in better perspective than Derrick McKey after Indiana ended the Knicks’ season with a tremendous Game 6 performance that included outrebounding them by 42-34.

“We’re an aging team,” McKey said. “If we didn’t do it this year I don’t think this team would have made it to the finals.”

Larry Bird, in his third – and final – season as the Pacers’ head coach, having brought them to the conference finals as a last stop the last two seasons, basked in victory.

“It’s a great thing that happened for our veteran players that have been around the league and battled so hard over the years without ever having been to a final,” Bird said.

“This is their day. We finally made it happen.

“I know how tough it is to get to the finals. That’s why I feel so good for Reggie, Chris Mullin and Mark Jackson and Sam Perkins. It’s a great feeling. The one thing I told (team president) Donnie Walsh when I took the job was, ‘I should be able to get these guys to the finals.’ I believed that and here we are.”

The Pacers’ locker room was wildly emotional after the game. There was yelling, screaming, celebrating and tears of joy.

Pacers’ guard Travis Best called it “very bizarre” and a “funny feeling” hearing Madison Sqaure Garden fall ily silent as the final moments melted away.

“We’ve had some tough times in the locker room after losses we felt we let slip away, or games we felt we should have won,” said Best, who scored eight of his 10 points in the decisive fourth quarter, which began tied at 62. “This team is tough to beat here. And to celebrate in this locker room right now … everyone is elated.”

Former St. John’s star Mullin, likely playing in his final season, didn’t play a minute in the series, but that hardly mattered last night.